Assassination by Tiger

Thank goodness Kym and Sharon came to help
at Collectorama.  Here they are in front of some
of our French vintage pictures and reproductions,
and the jewellery cabinet.  This was a busy part
of our stand.

Well, Collectorama was great fun and a great success.  Hurrah!  At the mountain stronghold we normally watch the sun rise over the ocean, but on Saturday we were up and about in the pre-predawn light.  Yeah, I think I can live without too much pre-predawn light in my life.  But the clouds tinged a lovely deep pink as the sun rose, the day promised to be warm and sunny and we set off in high spirits. 

How lucky for us that our friend Sharon and my sister Kym had kindly offered to help out, because boy we were hammered!  The line of punters’ cars waiting to get into the Showgrounds at 7.30am snaked around the block, so that was a good sign that we were in for a big day.  We had worked hard to ensure that our copper was gleaming, the metalware was waxed and polished, and our best pieces of glass were arranged just so.  Our big jewellery cabinet was fully stocked, and those reproduction pictures I had laboured over to get exactly right were nicely displayed.  So we were set and in they came.  And came.  And came.

 

People don’t have to make the effort to approach you and tell you how nice your stand looks, and how good your prices are, so we were appreciative when this happened on a number of occasions.  As everyone had predicted, all my previous griping about how high the prices are at Collectorama ended as soon as I took a stand at the Fair, because it worked entirely to our advantage.

 

The copper looked great and was much admired.
We will be looking for especially big saucepans
on this trip, plus frying pans are always hard to
get but much sought-after.  And any other
special and unusual copper pieces we can find.

We sold as many of our vintage French magazine covers and advertisements in that one day as we had done during our best week ever in the shop.  And interestingly, a high number of those images were the reproductions.  It felt good to see that the effort I had put into ensuring that they are the best reproductions I’ve ever seen paid off, with lots of people admiring them, and at $12 each all the buyers told me how refreshing it was to get something so good at such a good price.  So I judge that experiment to be a success, and shall now get lots more of my best pictures reproduced.  Some people will always want the originals, and we still have plenty of originals.  But it turns out that many people want the beautiful images but at more affordable prices.  So let’s give the people what they want.

We also sold all of my black baroque pearl pendants, which only came out as an after-thought when I was chatting with someone about various pieces of old new stock I had acquired.  Old new stock is stock that is vintage, but has never been worn.  It usually comes from shops that were closed down and packed up, with the boxes sitting for sometimes decades before they are rediscovered and sold off.  It’s really rare to get your hands on this type of stock, but I met a woman in England who bought the entire contents of a jewellery shop that had closed down in Paris in the 1960s, and then got her hands on most of the stock from a jewellery shop in Prague that closed down in the 1930s.  I’ll be seeing her during our up-coming buying trip, and I’ll see if she’s still got any good pieces for me.

Part of our stand at the Collectorama Antiques
Fair.  We used some of the shelving from our
old shop and it displayed lots of things nicely.

We picked up our house-sitters on Thursday, so they had a couple of days to reacquaint themselves with the moggies before we head off.  They've been very naughty lately (the moggies, not the house-sitters), but we’ve not been able to take them for too many walks because of the mess of the building site.  There is good snake cover on the house pad at the moment, and we’ve seen plenty of snakes about in this warm weather, plus it’s tick season and without being able to keep the grass super short it’s great tick habitat.  But it means the gang has been bouncing off the walls – literally in Caleb’s case! – and getting into mischief.  Bloody Klaatu snuck onto the dining table to chew his way through my camera battery charger, Calypso jumped on our vintage clothes airer and mostly broke it, with Caleb bouncing on it and chewing away the webbing to finish the job.  Artemis has been busy asserting her authority and beating up on everyone – not bad for a 4kg skinny little miss (especially when you consider that Caleb is now 7kg), and Mischka has been getting very clingy and trying to burrow her way into the bed every night.  Claws sunk into unsuspecting naked bits aren’t a lot of fun, I’m here to assure you.

Caleb having a brief moment of chilling. 
He has been immune to the chaos of
getting ready for the Fair and then
all the last minute packing for the
buying trip.  All our packing is last
minute - with half an hour to go
before we leave the airport, I must
go now and get it finished.

Now we’re off to the airport, for the bit of each trip that I like the least.  Long haul travel in cattle class is no fun, but we don’t see the benefit of spending so much on business class when we could be spending that dosh on goodies and having a good time.  So I shall settle in for a movie marathon for the next 8 hours to Bangkok.  The flight is packed and we don’t have great seats on this leg, but thereafter we have our preferences.  These small things make a big difference, I’ve found.

 

Tomorrow we shall be at the Tiger Temple, and then off jungle trekking with elephants.  Doug has a history of trying to have me assassinated by wild animals on my birthday - you might recall me being thrust into an enclosure with wild meercats last year, where one little wretch bit me when I didn't feed him fast enough.  But the potential assassins on that occasion were firstly (mostly) too friendly, and when they did get bitey their teeth were very sharp but too small to seriously savage me.  So now Doug has upped his game, and is thrusting me towards a herd of wild tigers.  Okay, probably tame tigers, but still with big bitey teeth and big scratchy claws.  I have plenty of scars from Caleb and Calypso playing too rough, so Doug might be in with a better chance this time.  And failing that, I can be thrust under stompy elephant feet.  Yep, he sure does love me.

Klaatu and Artemis are clearly deeply stressed by our imminent departure.  They very much enjoy the house-sitters visiting, because they get spoilt rotten.  When we get back, oh dear it's back to cat food, people.  So they like to make the most of begging for special treats while we're away, before Training and Discipline returns in mid-October.
 

Okay, we’re off.  Everyone behave while I’m away – I’ll be getting reports, you know.  I have spies everywhere.